HISSandaROAR CHIMES released!

December 9, 2011

Whoah it turned into quite a big library! The ULTRA 192kHz full rez version is 11Gb uncompressed (7.2GB rar’d download) and includes two sets of stereo recordings: a pair of omni MKH8020s and an MKH800 with an MKH8050, while the MAX 96k version is stereo, 2.7GB uncompressed (1.6GB download) Its live now on the site so check it out if you need some highly resonant metallic chimes… I recorded a total of 11 different wind chimes, 10 percussion instruments and 4 sets of bells (including a set of sleigh bells, incase you happen to do promos for Santa or something!)

Initially this library was solely going to contain wind chimes, which I have spent the last year collecting many different types. Wind chimes can be incredibly useful for colouring an ambience with a subtle harmonic element – I used them to great effect as a memory device in the war film Home by Christmas. There is a scene early in the film where a young couple are in bed, on his last night before heading off to war. Three quarters of the way through the film he receives a letter from his young wife with a photo of their new baby boy. I wanted to link the scenes using sound – when the couple are in bed the window is open and the curtain is gently moving, so I placed some wind chimes gently in the ambiences. Later when he gets the letter he is in a noisy bar, but as he opens the letter the camera tracks in on the photo and as it does so the mixers did a beautiful job of pulling out all the sync sound (the bar crowd & loop group etc) and we pushed into this gentle wind chime ambience. It works so beautifully on an emotional level, but it also makes dramatic sense – the memory of his last intimate moment with his wife, will he ever see her again?

As usual, the further into a library I get the more I want to expand it.. So I decided to include percussion instruments that were chime related: Bell trees, Chime bars, Mark trees, Glockenspiels…. and I slowly collected up a bunch of these, but also recently met a local percussionist who has a huge collection of instruments…

It’s important to note these were all recorded with the aim of providing sound design source material, not to recreate the instrument the way music sample libraries do. There are no Kontakt instruments, or multiple velocity sample layers of every possible note or action. But there are a lot of performances with each prop (and you can use them in music if you want to, I’ve updated the license agreement for this library accordingly)

After a decent sleep (& some rest for my ears!) I had a play with some of the sounds this morning… Trying even some basic processing provided some very interesting results, have a listen: